High School Exit Exams

High school exit exams are used to assess high school students' achievements as they near graduation. Though they were originally instituted as minimum competency exams, which were meant to ensure that students met minimum graduation requirements, today they have expanded to include end of course and standards based exams. With all of these exams, students must achieve or exceed minimum scores in order to graduate. Schools and school districts may offer students who do not initially pass the exams remedial courses, multiple retests, alternative testing, or the opportunity to prove their competencies through other means.

Keywords End of Course Exams; High-Stakes Testing; High School Exit Exams; Minimum Competency Exams; No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB); Remediation; Standardized Testing; Standards-Based Exams

Testing & Evaluation > High School Exit Exams

Overview

High school exit exams have been used in the United States in different forms since the 1970s. The exams are standardize tests intended to make a high school diploma more meaningful and assure employers and colleges that the recipient of a diploma has received the knowledge and skills necessary to obtain employment or attend higher education.

Types of Exit Exams

High school exit exams tend to fall into three basic categories:

• Minimum competency exams,

• Standards-based exams, and

• End-of-course exams,

Some state's exams overlap between categories.

Minimum competency exams define minimum levels of competence, evaluate students' basic skills, and are generally written at an eighth or ninth grade level of difficulty. Minimum competency exams are usually given during a specific period designated solely for testing, generally sometime in the spring, and can take up to a week to finish.

Standards-based exams are generally a more rigorous version of a minimum competency exam and cover advanced skills and knowledge, such as science and social studies, besides basic skills. These tests are also usually administered sometime during the spring and take up to a week to complete.

End-of-course exams, given at the end of a specific course, are intended to assess what students have learned in the course. They are different from minimum competency and standards-based exams, which are administered at a particular point in time regardless of when students learned the test material.

History

During the 1970s and 1980s, states began implementing minimum competency exams to evaluate students' basic skills in reading and mathematics. Since they were created under political pressure, they were more of a product of state policymakers and education reformers than of instructors and school administrators (Chudowsky, Kober, Gayler & Hamilton, 2002). Between 1973 and 1983, the number of states that implemented a statewide minimum competency exam increased from 2 to 34, but not every state made passing the exam a requirement for graduation (Linn, 2000, as cited in Chudowsky et al., 2002). During the 1990s, some states got rid of their minimum competency exams altogether or reformatted them the disguise of other standard exams (Chudowsky et al., 2002).

In 2002, of the eighteen states that had high school exit exams, ten states administered minimum competency exams, six states gave their students standards-based exams, one state used end-of-course exams, and one state offered both standards-based and end-of-course exams (Chudowsky et al., 2002). Currently, twenty-two states demand that their students pass a high school exit test or equivalent to earn their diploma (Olson, 2006).

In an attempt to make exit tests more severe and on par with state standards, by 2008 three states will use minimum competency exams, sixteen will use standards-based exams, and five will use end-of-course exams. However, some states explicitly state that their test content is aligned to the state's standard at a specified grade level when other states don’t, making it impossible to determine if exit exams are getting ore rigorous, less rigorous, or remaining the same (Chudowsky et al., 2002).

By the year 2012 twenty-five states will demand that students pass their exit exam before receiving a diploma. More than seven in ten of the country's public high school students and more than eight in ten of the nation's minority public high school students will be affected by these exams (Olson, 2006).

Exit Exam Content

Despite the growing prevalence of exit exams, not all exams are the same. Though every state exam contains English/language arts content, this content can be called by different terms and can variously include or exclude test items evaluating writing, reading, and communication abilities as well as literary knowledge. In 2002, only 39% of the states' exams demanded that students pass science and social studies exams (Chudowsky et al., 2002). Content homogeneity is increasing, however. By 2012, 76% of states will require students to pass science tests, and 52% will require their students to pass tests in social studies (Olson, 2006).

All states use at least some multiple-choice questions on their high school exit exams, primarily because they are the cheapest types of test to administer and the easiest to score. Multiple-choice questions also allow students to answer quickly; therefore, a test can include many questions covering a variety of topics. Only a few states' tests, however, are made up completely of multiple-choice questions, and most are minimum competency exams that are being phased out. By 2008, 63 percent of the states using a high school exit exam will include some short answer questions, and 92 percent of the states will have writing prompts. Short answer questions may require students to complete short-answers, charts, graphs, and fill-in-the-blanks. Writing prompts require students to answer a question in an open-ended manner by utilizing their reasoning and persuasive writing skills. Students are usually required to complete one or more written essays that could be narrative, informational, or persuasive. These essays are then assessed and graded by at least two trained readers who evaluate them on content, organization, style, sentence structure, and grammar (Chudowsky et al., 2002).

Applications

Administering the Tests

Most states begin administering exit exams in the tenth grade, though some begin as early as the eighth grade or as late at the eleventh. States tend to begin testing early so that students will have plenty of opportunities to retest and go through remediation before graduation. States which delay testing do so under the belief that students will have been exposed to and learned more of the test material by the later half of high school. States which use end-of-course exams as high school exit exams naturally administer them whenever students have completed the corresponding courses.

Students taking retests are typically given a parallel version of the original with slightly different questions. States allow students anywhere between two and eleven retesting opportunities; some even allow students continue retesting even after they leave high school, up until they reach the age of twenty-one (Chudowsky et al., 2002). States are also implementing new options for students who cannot pass the exit exam after more than one attempt. Depending on the state, students can substitute SAT, ACT, or Advanced Placement scores; pass an alternative assessment; pursue a waiver or appeals process; substitute a course grade; or complete some combination of these options.

Both students with disabilities and English language learners typically pass high school exit exams at a lower rate than other students (Olson, 2006). Students with disabilities often have their exam requirement delayed or waived altogether; English language learners may also receive some type of testing accommodation or be exempted. By 2008, 22 states will offer accommodations to students with disabilities. Five states will offer exemptions for these students, and nine will provide alternative assessments. All states using high school exit exams require that students who have English as a second language must meet the same pass requirements as other, English-speaking students. By 2008, 18 states will offer accommodations to English language learners, and five states will translate the exit exam-with the exception of the English/language arts subtests-into other languages (Chudowsky et al., 2002).

Challenges in Implementing Exit Exams

Implementing exit exams can be difficult. States must be sure that

• Cutoff scores realistically describe what students need to know to succeed after graduation

• Curriculum matches test content

• Tests assess students accurately

• Remedial programs are designed for success

• Appropriate accommodation is provided to disabled students and English language learners.

Most states phase in their high school exit exams to allow many years between introducing the exams and withholding the high school degrees. During this period, states can make adjustments to the tests to correct issues such as unexpectedly high failure rates or scores that do not comport to previous assessments (Hoff, 2003).

States walk a fine line when setting exit exam cutoff scores. The cutoffs for a pass or fail decision should be directly related to concrete standards that set forth exactly what each student must know by the completion of his or her high school education. A cutoff score must be high enough the make the exam meaningful, yet reasonable enough so that students can pass the exam without any unwarranted difficulty. States resolve this dilemma in a few ways. They can develop a challenging exam, but set a low cutoff score, like only having to correctly answer 40% of the questions on each subject section of the exam. Alternatively, they can raise cutoff scores over a period of several years to allow students time to adjust to the new standards. Whatever standards are set, they must be taught in the classroom. To do otherwise undermines the purpose of administering exit exams (Chudowsky et al., 2002).

States need to ensure that students have had adequate opportunities to learn the test material. School districts must be sure that their curriculum is aligned with their state's standards and provide appropriate instruction. This alignment should go beyond high school curriculum, all the way down to elementary school. The standards and curriculum from elementary school through high school should be coherent and logically developed toward the exit exam test material.

Remediation

States also need to offer remediation for students who cannot pass the exit test. Roughly half the states that have mandatory high school exit exams currently provide state funds for remedial assistance for students who do not pass. In the other states, the burden falls each district and school. Students who do not pass their exit exams can receive special remediation in the forms of extra learning, special teaching methods, and other learning resources. Offering students multiple retesting opportunities or alternative ways to demonstrate proficiency, can also ensure that students are fairly assessed and have plenty of opportunities to earn their diplomas (Chudowsky et al., 2002).

Testing Students with Disabilities

Yet another consideration states need to address is how to develop fair and effective procedures for evaluating students with disabilities and students who take English as a second language courses. By federal law, these students must be taught the normal curriculum information when it is at all possible. To ensure that their needs are being addressed, they should be included in state assessments. But for students who fall into either of these categories, a traditional exit exam might not be the most accurate form of calculating their knowledge and skills. Therefore, states should offer students appropriate test accommodations. Though it can be difficult to determine which accommodations are appropriate, because some may change the nature of the competencies being tested, some common ones allowed disabled and English language learner students are

• One-on-one or small group testing situations

• Extended testing time

• Magnifying equipment, readers, signers, or transcribers

• The option of dictating their responses (Chudowsky et al., 2002).

A final consideration for states that are considering implementing a high school exit exam should be their willingness to monitor the consequences of their decisions in all their aspects, including exam process, policies, and funding. States must commit to revisiting the competencies being assessed and to being flexible enough to address and correct any issues that arise in exam process, policies and funding.

Viewpoints

Though there will probably always be stories about the valedictorian who took seven attempts to pass her exit exam - and even then passed only by a single point - there are positive aspects to required high school exit exams along with some challenges ("Tests Expose Flawed Diplomas," 2006).

Proponents of high school exit exams say that the exams make sure high school diplomas are meaningful and represent the skills and knowledge students need to succeed in college and the workplace. They also contend that high school exit exams help raise student achievement and make schools more accountable. The exams, they say, may be necessary to weed out those students who do not have the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed after graduation; those who passed courses simply because they always showed up for class. Alternatively, the exams may also serve to alert high schools and school districts that have not aligned their curriculum and standards to their state's high school exit exam. In other words, the valedictorian who fails her exam may have acquired a lot of knowledge during her high school years, but what she learned is not covered on the exit exam. In either situation, the onus should not be on the student; it should be on the school to determine the education needed to pass the exit exam and then help its students acquire that knowledge during their years in the school system.

Testing & Dropout Rates

Those who are opposed to high school exit exams say that they lead to higher dropout rates, lead instructors to teach just to the test, narrow the curriculum, and, because they fail the tests in disproportionate numbers, discriminate against minority and low-income students. There is also great resistance to using a single high-stakes testing instrument to determine whether or not students receive a diploma rather than a certificate of attendance or completion. The tests can also place unexpected financial burdens on states. To ensure that students pass their exams, schools may have to offer free remediation over the summer, tutoring after regular classroom hours, or have special classes during regular hours with smaller groups of students, all which require additional funding (Ashford, 2003). Additionally, since most high school exit exams are only written at an eighth-, ninth-, or tenth-grade level of difficulty ("Tests Expose Flawed Diplomas," 2006), it is arguable that passing them does not indicate that the students have earned their diplomas.

The data describing the correlation between high school exit exams and dropout rates is, for the most part, inconclusive. For every article reporting that high school exit exams cause higher dropout rates (Glenn, 2006), there is another arguing that there is only a small effect or no correlation at all (Davis, 2004). In fact, one study reported that eight states using high school exit exams had a higher dropout rate, while the dropout rate decreased in five states (Cavanagh, 2003). The conclusions of these reports all depend on the type of information looked at, who is doing the research, and how the data is reported and interpreted.

The No Child Left Behind Act

The No Child Left Behind Act does not mandate that states administer high school exit exams, but it does require states must test students at least once while they are in high school. No Child Left Behind also stipulates that states should define what their own academic content standards will be and make sure that said standards are in conversation with those from the states’ content standards. The act, however, does not define content standards, set the performance standards for each state, or detail the type of assessments and cutoff scores that should be used, leaving these determinations up to each individual state. No Child Left Behind describes how states are to set their annual measurable objectives, which are centered around the percentage of students who function at or above proficiency. These standards, which can include high school exit exams, are used to determine if schools, districts, and states make annual yearly progress. If the percentage of students passing state tests is insufficient, schools have not made adequate yearly progress. Sanctions “are imposed on schools not meeting their annual yearly progress two years in a row; the consequences are increasingly severe for schools missing targets for a third, fourth, and fifth years, and can ultimately result in the loss of federal funding” (Linn, 2005, p. 91).

Conclusion

High school exit exams can be helpful for determining college placement if states and school districts work with local colleges and universities to align high school standards with the expectations for college freshmen. As it now stands, the number of incoming freshmen who have to take developmental courses is very high. In one state that made passing a high school exit exam a requirement in 2002, research showed that 37 percent of incoming college freshmen still had to take a remedial course in reading, English and/or mathematics, which was only a two percent improvement from before high school exit exams were required (Sacchetti, 2005). Colleges and universities throughout the nation spend approximately $1.4 billion yearly in order to give appropriate remedial education to those who are recent graduates of high school. If states, school districts, and colleges and universities work together to set high school standards, those students who do pass their high school exit exam will be able to save a lot of time and money by going directly into college-level classes. They will not have to spend a semester or two taking remedial classes, saving them money on tuition and books. Tax dollars used to support public institutions of higher education will also be saved.

High school exit exams can be a powerful tool for states, schools, and students alike. They can help instructors align their teaching towards exam materials, which should be grounded in sound research on the skills and knowledge students will need to be successful after high school. As a result, students who have a diploma from a state that requires the exams may increase their appeal to employers and colleges.

However, to be most effective, high school exit exams should be aligned with college and university requirements so that students can bypass remedial courses and seamlessly enter higher education. School districts and schools need to develop their curriculum from the ground up, starting with elementary schools, so that students are systematically learning the skills and knowledge they will need to draw upon to succeed in high school and pass their exit exams. When curriculum is carefully developed, students are the better for it. School is no longer something to be dreaded, creating a better learning environment for everyone.

Terms & Concepts

End-of-Course Exam: An end-of-course exam is an assessment given at the end of a course to determine whether students have mastered the course content.

High School Exit Exams: High school exit exams are tests that students must pass in order to graduate from high school and receive a diploma.

High-Stakes Testing: High-stakes testing is the use of test scores to make decisions that have important consequences for individuals, schools, school districts, and/or states and can include high school graduation, promotion to the next grade, resource allocation, and instructor retention.

Minimum Competency Exam: Minimum competency exams are assessments that focus on basic skills in reading, writing, and mathematics and are generally written at an eighth or ninth grade level of difficulty.

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB): The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is the latest reauthorization and a major overhaul of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the major federal law regarding K-12 education.

Remediation: Remediation is the act or process of correcting an academic deficiency by providing additional instruction, tutoring, or other support service.

Standardized Testing: Standardized testing is the use of a test that is administered and scored in a uniform manner, and the tests are designed in such a way that the questions and interpretations are consistent.

Standards-Based Exam: A standards-based exam is an assessment based on a set of performance-based criteria that every student is expected to know and be able to do.

Bibliography

Alliance for Excellent Education (2006). Paying double: Inadequate high schools and community college remediation. Retrieved August 18, 2007, from http://www.all4ed.org/publications/remediation.pdf

Ashford, E. (2003). Re-thinking high school exit exams. Education Digest, 69 , 51-55. Retrieved August 16, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=11143673&site=ehost-live

Cavanagh, S. (2003). Exit exams bringing unexpected burdens, policy group reports. Education Week, 23 , 24. Retrieved August 16, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=10764580&site=ehost-live

Chudowsky, N., Kober, N., Gayler, K. & Hamilton, M. (2002). State high school exit exams: A baseline report. Washington, D.C.: Center on Education Policy. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED472055).

Davis, M. (2004). Study: Exit exams have minimal effect on dropout rates. Education Week, 23 , 10. Retrieved August 16, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=13219464&site=ehost-live

Glenn, D. (2006). High-school exit exams linked to higher dropout rates, researchers find. Chronicle of Higher Education, 52 , A14. Retrieved August 16, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=21750840&site=ehost-live

Hemelt, S. W., & Marcotte, D. E. (2013). High school exit exams and dropout in an era of increased accountability. Journal of Policy Analysis & Management, 32, 323-349. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=86235901&site=ehost-live

Hoff, D. (2003). Forecasting failures, N.Y. delays raising exam threshold. Education Week, 23 , 20. Retrieved August 16, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=11262574&site=ehost-live

Holme, J., & Heilig, J. (2012). High-stakes decisions: The legal landscape of high school exit exams and the implications for schools and leaders. Journal of School Leadership, 22, 1177-1197. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=83835075&site=ehost-live

Linn, R. (2005). Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 104 , 79-98. Retrieved May 2, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=17238819&site=ehost-live

More students with disabilities opt out of Calif. exit exam. (2013). Education Daily, 46, 4. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=87404311&site=ehost-live

Olson, L. (2006). Number of graduation exams required by states levels off. Education Week, 26 , 28-32. Retrieved August 17, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=22416178&site=ehost-live

Sacchetti, M. (2005, June 26). Colleges question MCAS success. The Boston Globe. Retrieved August 18, 2007, from http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/mcas/articles/2005/06/26/colleges_question_mcas_success/

Tests expose flawed diplomas (2006, July 25). USA Today, p. 12a. Retrieved August 17, 2007 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=22416178&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Elmore, R., Carnoy, M. & Siskin, L. (2003). The New Accountability: High Schools and High-Stakes Testing. Oxford, UK: Routledge-Falmer.

Elmore, R. & Fuhrman, S. (2004). Redesigning Accountability Systems for Education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Gaylor, K. (2003). State High School Exit Exams: Put to the Test. Darby, PA: Diane Publishing Co.

Hamilton, L. & Klein, S. (2002). Making Sense of Test-Based Accountability in Education. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

National Research Council (1999). High Stakes: Testing for Tracking, Promotion, and Graduation. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.